a bear, a blog, a beautiful mess of organized chaos

Special Photo Challenge: Inspiration

In the new year I’ve decided to attempt to get more involved in the blogging/craft world. Last month I came across The CSI Project (CSI stands for Create Something Inspiring), right up my alley, right? The CSI Project has weekly craft challenges, and much like the Weekly Photo Challenge I participate in, they provide a theme for the craft for you to construct and submit. Typically they are looking for new projects that you would craft that week, but this being the first one of 2013 the theme is “Favorite Project of 2012″. This is my submission.

Original Post:
A mid-week photo challenge?? Count me in.

This challenge is actually a contest as well! The winner’s will be featured in some design tests for WordPress.com which means extra traffic to the winner’s blogs. You may recall I go to great lengths to get some extra traffic, so if it’s something as simple as submitting a photo, you know I’m down. It’s a coincidence that the theme for this challenge ‘Inspiration’ came out right as I was working on my ‘Pinspiration’ post.

What inspires me to blog? My crafts! Yes, it’s true, I’m known to go off on rants every now and then, but when I began this blog my focus was DIY projects, crafts and cooking. As of late, crafts and projects have been taking over my life, typically I’m proud of what I’ve done which is why I like to share my ideas (or other people’s ideas that I stole) with other bloggers, crafters and Do It Yourselfers.

The tricky part about this challenge (besides the short time frame, it should be no surprise that I tend to procrastinate) was it required you to submit a photo of yourself doing whatever is it you do that inspires you to blog. Being home alone most of the day means I needed to take the picture of myself, by myself. Thank the camera gods for that self timing option!

My Submission:

c-c-c-craftin like it’s nobody’s business

Added bonus:

Come on kids, you didn’t think I’d post a picture of me crafting and not include details about that craft, did you?

I call it a “Pictured-frame” mirror (you see what I did there?), and it’s another super simple project that can be completed in a few short hours.

Only a few supplies needed to pull this project off, first and foremost you’ll need a mirror (duh!) The bigger the frame, the better, because it allows for more room for the photos. If you have just a mirror that doesn’t have a frame at all, that’ll work too! Just glue them on the outside edge to form your own frame.

You’ll need pictures (double duh!) I chose to print mine out in a sepia tone for two reasons. First, I wanted to keep it somewhat neutral for the new condo. And two, the color of the frame already on the mirror was a beigey-tan, which would blend in with the sepia tones just in case I cut a picture too short and some of the frame was exposed (that was a good call by the way, I’m not the straightest cutter and if the frame had been bright green to start off with it would’ve been really obvious).

Third thing you’ll need is the beloved Mod Podge. I love this stuff can’t live without this stuff. It is, quite literally, the glue that holds this project together.

Let us begin.

Arrange your pictures around your frame the way you want them. My advice would be to take a picture of this, you’ll have to remove all the pictures in order to cut them and being able to check back at the picture will ensure your placement stays the same.

Fold over the picture where the frame ends, or draw a line with a pen or marker. For some reason I did I mix of both. It doesn’t matter what you chose, it’s just an indicator so you know where to cut. I played with the idea of wrapping the photos around the frame and leaving it that way, but each picture had a different amount of overhang and it would’ve looked sloppy. I chose to cut them all at the edge to keep it consistent.

Cut the photos and rearrange them on the frame to make sure there’s no overhang and everything is in it’s place. Now break out the Mod Podge- it’s time to start gluing! If you’re overlapping photos make sure you paste them down in the correct order. For the first few photos I pasted down I traced their placement with a pencil so I was sure to put them in the right spot.

When everything is pasted in it’s place brush a layer of Mod Podge over the top.

I know it looks gross and you feel like you’ve just destroyed everything. Chill out amigo! It’ll dry clear, and you’ll have a nice protective coat over your pictures. When the Mod Podge is dry in about an hour feel free to put a second coat on (I did), I’m not entirely sure it’s necessary though. When that’s dry you’re good to go!

Note: Perhaps something I should’ve said at the start- if your mirror already has a frame on it- before you begin gluing anything down make sure you’re gluing things on the right way. After my project was complete, I flipped over the mirror to see where the bracket was to hang the mirror on the wall and I had glued all of the photos on upside down. Sigh. Luckily I was able to solve my problem with the bracket. However, I have been unable to solve my problem of feeling like a huge idiot.

So, from now on, every time you look in the mirror you won’t be so alone because you’ll be surrounded by your friends!